Ouarzazate at the heart of the Green March: three participants tell their story

In November 1975, delegations were formed in every province of Morocco before setting off for the south. Like streams flowing from different territories, their convoys converged on Tarfaya and a shared horizon. Among the marchers who left Ouarzazate were Mouloud Jghou, Abderrahmane Moussa and Fatoma Ghouate. Recorded in 2019, more than forty years after the events, their memories evoke the preparations, the journey, life in the camps and the crossing of the border. Three personal accounts brought together in a written record and a rare video.

Article written in 2019, revised and expanded in 2026.

The Green March of 1975: a few key facts

Following Morocco’s independence in 1956, the Kingdom continued the process of recovering territories that had remained under Spanish administration. Tarfaya was reintegrated into Morocco in 1958, followed by Sidi Ifni in 1969. The question of Western Sahara, which was still administered by Spain, nevertheless remained unresolved within the wider process of decolonisation.

Morocco brought its claims before international institutions and asked the International Court of Justice to rule on the ties that had existed between the territory and the Kingdom before Spanish colonisation.

In its advisory opinion delivered on 16 October 1975, the Court recognised the existence of legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some of the tribes of Western Sahara.

It nevertheless concluded that the evidence examined did not establish a territorial sovereignty of such a nature as to prevent the application of the principle of self-determination.

In the hours that followed, King Hassan II announced the organisation of a peaceful march towards the Sahara. Its departure was set for 6 November 1975. According to Morocco’s official chronology, 350,000 volunteers, including 35,000 women, took part in the Green March.

The appeal prompted a remarkable mobilisation. In cities, villages and rural communities, men and women registered to join the delegations formed in every province.

In Ouarzazate, as elsewhere, many felt that history had suddenly summoned them.

“There is only one thing left for us to do, dear people. We must undertake a Green March from the north of Morocco to its south, and from its east to its west… We must, dear people, act as one man, in order and discipline, and reunite with our brothers.”

The late King Hassan II

In Ouarzazate, the call to join the Green March

The provinces of southeast Morocco were widely represented. Participants from Ouarzazate, Errachidia, Tinghir and Zagora joined the other provincial delegations travelling south.

Mouloud Jghou, Abderrahmane Moussa and Fatoma Ghouate, all three from Ouarzazate, were among them. Decades later, each retained deeply personal memories of the days during which the Green March was being prepared.

Abderrahmane Moussa was 25 years old in 1975. He was working as a tour guide at the time. He remembers a genuine collective fever taking hold of Ouarzazate: conversations, registrations and preparations all seemed to revolve around a single idea—taking part in the March. He registered as a volunteer and joined the provincial delegation.

Mouloud Jghou was living in France at the time. The preparations were being reported in the press and on radio and television. Like many Moroccans living abroad, he initially followed the event from a distance. But the emotion stirred by the announcement of the March was so powerful that he decided to return to Morocco and register as a participant as soon as he arrived.

Fatoma Ghouate, who was born in the Kasbah of Taourirte, also answered the call. Her decision was not the result of long reflection. She remembers being carried by the momentum of the moment and by the conviction that she should take part, alongside the men, in an event that was mobilising the entire country.

Delegations from across Morocco

Participants were grouped according to their province of origin. Each delegation was identified by a letter: the Errachidia delegation carried the letter A, while Ouarzazate carried the letter B, according to the memories of the three witnesses.

This organisation gave the Green March its distinctive form. The movement did not begin in one single place. It emerged simultaneously in every region of the country.

Groups formed in cities, oases, valleys and rural communities. They then joined the main roads before gradually merging into a much larger whole. Like streams flowing down from territories far removed from one another, the delegations converged on the south until they formed a single human river.

The volunteers from Ouarzazate therefore set off in their own convoy, with their own leaders, organisation and identifying symbol

From Ouarzazate to Tarfaya: the convoys’ journey

The convoys from Ouarzazate and Errachidia travelled through Agadir, Tiznit and Guelmim before continuing towards Tarfaya. To prevent congestion, several hours separated the passage of the different groups.

The trucks stopped regularly outside towns and villages. Throughout the journey, local inhabitants gathered along the roads to greet the participants. Fatoma particularly remembers the crowds cheering the convoys and sometimes sharing part of their provisions with the marchers.

As the trucks moved forward, the landscapes changed and the distances grew longer. But the journey itself had already become part of the event. The songs, flags and gatherings encountered in every locality gave participants the feeling that they were being carried forward by a mobilisation extending far beyond their own delegation.

Tarfaya was the final major stage before the border. A vast network of camps had been established around the town to receive the volunteers arriving from every part of Morocco.

According to the witnesses, the camp allocated to the province of Ouarzazate stood beside the ocean, approximately seven kilometres from the centre of Tarfaya. The Royal Armed Forces and the civilian administration had established an organisation there to receive, supply and supervise the participants.

Life in the Tarfaya camp

The volunteers were divided into sections, each placed under the responsibility of one participant. Mouloud Jghou was put in charge of a group of 114 people from the province of Ouarzazate.

He had to keep the list of members up to date, organise the distribution of supplies and respond to the everyday needs of his section. In his memory, provisions were shared without difficulty and everyone contributed, in their own way, to the life of the group.

Abderrahmane also recalls the importance of the supplies: water, bread, vegetables, fish and dates were transported to the camps. He remembers military aircraft sometimes dropping sacks of bread over the camp.

Fatoma describes a collective life that quickly took shape beneath the tents. The women built traditional earthen ovens in which to bake bread. She would go out to gather firewood and sometimes returned with meat and dates given to her by Moroccan soldiers.

She remembers with amusement that she ate a great deal during her stay and gained a noticeable amount of weight. Behind the immense scale of the national mobilisation, her account reveals a very concrete reality: gathering wood, preparing meals, baking bread and sharing provisions.

As the days passed, the camp became a temporary city. Groups arriving from different regions brought their own songs, dances and traditions with them. Amazighs, Arabs and Sahrawis came together in shared celebrations in which every delegation revealed something of its home territory.

For the three witnesses, the Green March was therefore not only a movement towards a border. It was also the experience of an immense community, made up of people who did not know one another but were learning to live, wait and act together.

On 6 November 1975, marching towards the border

On the evening of 5 November, King Hassan II addressed the participants gathered in the south, as well as the Moroccan population as a whole:

“Tomorrow, you will cross the border. Tomorrow, you will begin your March.”

The late King Hassan II

The following day, the delegations left their camps and advanced towards Tah and the border. The participants marched without weapons, carrying Moroccan flags and copies of the Quran.

From this point onwards, the three testimonies become particularly valuable. They do not offer a detached overview of the event, but reveal what each person saw, heard or felt from within the crowd.

In Abderrahmane’s memory, Ouarzazate moves to the front

Abderrahmane brings back to life some of the moments he experienced in the camp:

“Those in charge provided us with abundant supplies of every kind: water, bread, vegetables, dates, fish… C-130 military aircraft would sometimes drop sacks of baguettes over the camp.”

Abderrahmane Moussa

Abderrahmane remembers that the Errachidia convoy was initially positioned ahead of the Ouarzazate convoy. Detonations heard in the distance reportedly caused the marchers at the front to hesitate, as they feared that the Spanish forces were firing at them.

According to his account, the Ouarzazate delegation then moved past them and took the lead, followed by the delegation from Kenitra. Its members advanced towards the barbed wire marking the border and were among the first to cross it.

“We received the order to advance from Tarfaya towards Tah, the border line. The Errachidia convoy moved to the front of the procession, but the sound of gunfire discouraged them from continuing. They thought the Spanish were launching bombardments, so they moved back. We, the Ouarzazate convoy, passed them and took the lead, followed by the Kenitra convoy.
“We marched with determination towards the border, where we were the first to remove the barbed wire erected by the Spanish colonial authorities. A woman from our group named Fadma Mohamed Taberhout, also known as Tamimounte, who was perhaps 45 years old and came from the village of Iguernane, bravely and skilfully climbed the wall of a building until she reached its dome. She tore down the Spanish flag and replaced it with the Moroccan flag.
“This woman embodied the exhilaration that drove us all in the heat of the moment: the desire to be the first man or woman ready to sacrifice themselves for our homeland…”

Abderrahmane Moussa

This remains the memory of a participant who stood at the heart of the movement. It should be received as such: not as a military or administrative report, but as the direct memory of a man carried forward, alongside the others, by the intensity of the moment.

Tamimounte, a woman remembered by the marchers

Abderrahmane also associates this moment with the name of a woman from the Ouarzazate delegation: Fadma Mohamed Taberhout, known as Tamimounte, whom he remembers as coming from the village of Iguernane.

In his memory, the woman, then in her forties, climbed a structure near the border and replaced a Spanish flag with the Moroccan flag.

As he tells it, her action expressed the exhilaration driving the marchers and the desire of each participant to stand at the forefront. The memory of Tamimounte is one of the most singular fragments of his testimony. Her identity, her life and her role would now deserve a dedicated investigation, comparing this memory with the accounts of her family and any surviving archives.

Mouloud remembers the soldiers on the hills

Mouloud remembers walking for approximately fourteen kilometres through the border area. He recalls seeing Spanish soldiers and military vehicles on the higher ground, although no direct confrontation took place.

Mouloud estimates that he remained in the area for seven or eight days. As is often the case with accounts recorded several decades after an event, the exact duration and sequence of the different stages would need to be compared with archival records.

This chronological uncertainty does not diminish the value of his memory: that of a long wait beyond the barbed wire, in an area under the surveillance of the Spanish forces.

Fatoma remembers women marching alongside the men

Fatoma emphasises the presence of women at the forefront of the March. They advanced and crossed the border alongside the men, sharing the same conditions and uncertainties.

She particularly remembers the nights, when lights and explosions would suddenly illuminate a vast part of the sky. She describes them as fireworks launched by the Spanish soldiers. Their appearance sometimes caused fear among the participants.

One such incident is said to have caused a pregnant marcher to go into labour. According to Fatoma, the woman named her son Massir, derived from massira, the Arabic word for “march”.

Like the story of Tamimounte, this birth belongs to the parallel memory of major historical events: a memory made up of names, gestures and individual destinies that official accounts do not always preserve.

After crossing the barbed wire and reaching the place assigned to them, the participants reportedly gathered to pray and give thanks to God.

Three voices from the Green March preserved on video

Mouloud Jghou, Abderrahmane Moussa and Fatoma Ghouate do not describe exactly the same Green March. Each has preserved their own images of the event.

Mouloud remembers his hurried return from France, his responsibility for a section of marchers and the advance beyond the barbed wire. Abderrahmane recalls the feverish preparations in Ouarzazate, the movement of the convoys and the act attributed to Tamimounte. Fatoma remembers the inhabitants lining the roads, the ovens built in the camp, the provisions that were shared and the women marching alongside the men.

Their memories nevertheless come together in their evocation of a collective movement of exceptional scale. Behind the figure of 350,000 participants lie just as many personal experiences, many of which have only ever been passed down within families.

The video produced by Sudestmaroc.com allows us to rediscover the voices, faces and intonations of the three witnesses. It is not merely an illustration accompanying the article: it is its central archive.

These three residents of Ouarzazate took part in an event that became a major chapter in Morocco’s contemporary history. By recording their words, the purpose is not only to commemorate the Green March, but also to preserve what sweeping historical narratives sometimes allow to disappear: the tangible memories of the women and men who lived through them.